Given Steve Klabnik's recent actions to suppress people who hold political opinions he does not like, I have a considerable amount of trepidation knowing he has a leadership position in the community sub-team.
My freedom to dress as I want does not mean it is reasonable to demand to be treated equally when I am wearing a garbage bag to a meeting.
My freedom to not shower does not mean it is reasonable to demand to be treated equally when I stink up the place. Instead it is entirely reasonable to ask me to leave.
If a community manager asks people who express toxic opinions to leave, that is entirely reasonable. It's their job in fact. And make no mistake, the opinions of others you have linked to as being "suppressed" are toxic, so much so that in many countries [1] they would be considered illegal.
[1] And I am talking about countries that rank significantly higher than the US on the press freedom index:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Press_Freedom_Index#Rankings_a...
And outscore the US on the freedom house report on both civil liberties and political rights:
https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2015/germany#....
https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2015/united-st...
So please save your "Europeans don't care about freedom of expression" tropes.
Steve's been nothing but extremely polite and helpful in every interaction I've seen him have in the Rust community. He's only ever fought for inclusiveness and respect. How about giving him the benefit of the doubt, and admitting he's good for the community.
I believe he's already contributed a lot to the culture of inclusiveness and friendliness in the community that you mention you'd be bothered to be "ostracized" from.
(I also think part of the design of the mod team was done by Aaron, based off of my sketch of a design)
(I'm also not a stack overflow mod, I'm a mod on a couple of stack exchange sites -- though I have observed how stack overflow is moderates)
The design of the mod team can be found in the RfC[1].
The driving philosophy is to try and deescalate any situations which may crop up, either in situ or by privately discussing with the involved parties. It's easy to forget that the People on The Internet are humans too, so a technical discussion that gets heated sometimes needs a reminder to keep civil.
The purpose is to make sure that the code of conduct[2] is upheld online. Rust has had a CoC for a while now, but it wasn't enforced. This meant that users violating it in reality were free to continue violating it without much repercussions. And this had happened a couple of times; users were warned after being abrasive but no action was ever taken and it just got worse. The mod team can enforce the CoC by temporarily blocking a user from the project if warnings are ignored. Deescalate whenever possible, and if it doesn't work out, warn/act on the warnings.
Policing other teams is a part of it; the core team and subteams are also subject to moderation; which is why no core team member is on the mod team. In case of an ugly dispute between a core team member and some other user the mod team is a more impartial way of resolving it. Though in practice I don't think the core team would ever be in such a situation.
People often say that technical communities should stay technical and not worry about civility or other social issues. In my experience this rarely turns out well, aside from Rust I've seen this idea cause problems in other technical communities. Technical communities are, in the end, communities, and community health is something that needs tending. Maintaining civility and avoiding the exclusion (active or passive) of other users is a part of it, and that's something the mod team handles.
[1]: https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs/blob/master/text/1068-rust...
amongst more
It is especially troubling to have a community leader who equates speech with violence, even "hate" speech, which in that gist is clearly demonstrated to be completely subjective.
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[This link] takes a thing I said on Twitter and uses it to say something I don’t mean.
My twitter reply re: violence is based on the tweet it’s replying to: general activity by groups who call themselves ‘antifa’. I thought my parent was making a false equivalence, but rather than arguing with them about this false equivalence, I decided to just say ‘cool’ and bow out, hence my response. I believe “antifa are just as violent as the fascists” is wrong on multiple levels, but I don’t really care to get into it here, to be honest.
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... and I still don't. That's all I'll be saying here about this.
You then said, "the only things fascists respond to is violence. Ignoring them or letting them attack you doesn't help."
You then linked to a Woody Allen video where he confidentially states a Nazi march in NYC should be attacked with "bricks and bats" rather than taking a civilized approach against them.
You explicitly endorsed violence against political groups you dislike several times, don't try to pretend like you didn't now..
Fascism is horrible thing in all it's form and sizes. Even if Steve blurted out that he agrees that the only way to fight fascism is with force (which I haven't divulged from the context, twitter is horrible for conveying meaning), it makes sense once you stop and consider it an emotional response and not an ideology of person that said it.
> I fundamentally don't believe that information can be violent in any way.
For example. You arrive in a communist hating community (let's pretend it's during the Red scare). Someone accuses you of being a communist. Witch hunt ensues.
define: violence "behavior involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something."
It's clear that the meaning of "violence" is physical, not emotional.
> Someone accuses you of being a communist. Witch hunt ensues.
As I said: "It can facilitate violence, surely".
I never said witchhunt needed to end with violence. You can become black sheep, losing job, family, friends without a single follicles of your hair being torn. Your freedom could be taken, without you suffering any violence, e.g. house arrest.
He explicitly celebrated it. He talked about it being a natural order. He argued that "the innate character and intelligence of some is more suited to mastery than slavery."
This is pure, racist drivel. This is an evil way of thinking. There is a reason that racism, genocide, slavery are so abhorred in the modern world; they are poisonous ideas that have caused some of the largest atrocities history has known.
He also explicitly argues for a dictatorship beholden only to landowners: http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.co.uk/2009/07/seces.... He admits that his influences and design are similar to those of the Nazism and Stalinism.
He is a fascist, arguing for a violent dictatorship, and arguing that slavery is a natural order. These are not mere rhetorical devices; this is the core of his argument. His entire argument is steeped in violence.
> Of course, we are on equally safe ground in noting that both Hitler's party and Stalin's originated as political parties, and reading both genocidal maniacs as accidents of democracy.
I read Moldburg and I see an intelligent guy exposing the hypocrisies of politics left and right in an erudite, reasoned manner. I read yours and I see outright dumb slurs and lies.
And btw, this "legitimizes slavery" is bullshit. This is the article in question.
http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.co.uk/2009/07/why-c...